Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

Five Easy Pieces – The Marketing Mission After a few months of talking to customers , talking to our channel and working with sales we defined the marketing Mission (our job) was to: Help Sales deliver $25 million in sales with a 45% gross margin. I couldn’t care less about those. on April 10, 2009 at 6:58 am Said: Amazing blog.

Silicon Valley 271

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 271

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

It’s often said that you shouldn’t talk about price during customer development interviews. Price is not an exercise in maximizing some micro-economic supply/demand curve, slapped post-facto onto the product. Price is not an afterthought, it is essential business design.

Bootstrapping 294

Bootstrapping Technical Review B2C Sales Cycle 294

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

For the last few years, there really hasn’t been a demand to innovate on top of the ecosystem that’s been built. However, there’s a growing belief that the “design preferences” of Chinese consumers are just bad design. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital.

China 220

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 220

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

He wanted to build direct customer relationships to get product feedback but only 2% of customers would ever return their registration cards. So when he saw the browser it instantly dawned on him that this would be the greatest customer development tool ever. They would give companies $250,000 to launch their products.

Product 350

Product Tuvalu Dilution Incubator 350

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

Like a financial debt, the technical debt incurs interest payments, which come in the form of the extra effort that we have to do in future development because of the quick and dirty design choice. Yet there is one silver lining when it does happen: we wind up throwing out working code , debt-riddled and elegantly designed alike.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

Back then, an entrepreneur used a serial product development process that proceeded step-by-step with little if any customer feedback. They are: value proposition, product/service the company offers (along with its benefits to customers). customer segments, such as users and payers or moms or teens. Testing Hypotheses.

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 9, 2012

TLDR: Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits , authors of The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development are back with a new book called The Lean Entrepreneur. It took the idea of Customer Development and made it accessible to a whole new audience. Illustrations by FAKEGRIMLOCK. You can pre-order it starting today.

Entrepreneur 167

Entrepreneur Lean Southern California San Diego 167

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

I wanted to know if marketing was getting any bang-for-the-buck in spending its demand creation dollars. I wanted to understand how customers bought our products. That’s a mouthful to say that our sales people didn’t sell our products directly to a customer. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. Which ones?

Silicon Valley 213

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 213

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

If youre trying to design an architecture to maximize agility, how can that work if some people are working in TDD and others not? Platform selection and technical design - if your business strategy is to create a low-burn, highly iterative lean startup, youd better be using foundational tools that make that easy rather than hard.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 12, 2012

At the moment one of these customers identifies herself as a “promoter” on a survey, she immediately sees a form inviting her to write a review or recommendation on any of several social media sites. Find and leverage your customer influencers. Use advocacy to improve demand generation.

Social Media 164

Social Media Media Marketing Software Review 164

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provide the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development.

Customer Development 255

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 255

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 24, 2012

It’s hard to believe these are the methods and tools of a profession designed to attract and persuade us to become customers — especially when “we the buyers” increasingly ignore them. In circumstances like this, most firms call their legal departments and start issuing cease and desist demands. Pushy salespeople.

Marketing 234

Marketing Software Review Technical Review Social Network 234

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 23, 2009

The Times Square Strategy discussion I had with Eric Ries , was still top of mind, so instead of my standard Customer Development lecture , I offered my thoughts on: the origin of Customer Development, where we are today, and where does Customer Development go, and how you can help get it there.

Customer Development 229

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 229

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

As I present in my blog, defining the MVP requires answering the following question: "Will our customers be willing to buy the product with these features - available at this date - at this price?" Iterate quickly to uncover true market demands. Revisiting the Software Design Manifesto (and what.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

We talked about some simple design rules and I remember him thanking me for coming, saying we were the only chip company who cared enough to call on him (little did he know.) Long gone from Zilog I saw the picture of the original Macintosh design team. I thought nothing about the meeting until years later.

Silicon Valley 146

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 146

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

I think this concept is necessary in order to answer the truly vexing startup questions, like: “Should startups charge customers money from day one?&# Let’s begin with the four customer currencies. I had a lot of use for this concept back when I worked on game design and virtual worlds.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

Thanks to Suns amazing PR blitz, there was tremendous demand for experts on Java, and I did my best to convince people that I was one of that mythical breed. my startup is Blank Label (www.blank-label.com), which is a provider of custom dress shirts that empowers consumers to become the designer of their own product.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

Customer development. For those interested in getting started with agile or customer development, I thought Id include a few links. For customer development, start with Steves book The Four Steps to the Epiphany or take a look at his recent Entrepreneurial Thought Leader Lecture.

Lean 102

Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 6, 2008

They take things like unit testing, design documents and code reviews more seriously than any other company Ive even heard about. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development? Using AdWords to assess demand for your new online.

Agile 76

Agile San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment 76

The Next Web

MARCH 11, 2014

Visit his blog to read more about startups and product design. For the past year, they invested in the team and technology to prioritize speed of iteration with disregard to traditional methods of customer development and company building. Ryan Hoover is the co-creator of Product Hunt and EIR at Tradecraft.

Silicon Valley 151

Silicon Valley Cofounder Stock Options Mobile 151

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development? Using AdWords to assess demand for your new online. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. Getting educated about advertising, agencies, and.

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

My two cents is that a business plan is the single place to collect your thinking about about your: business model, distribution channel, demand creation plan, financial assumptions, and customer and product development plan. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. I was simply confused about what a plan was for.

Business Plan 160

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 160

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 5, 2020

The goal was simple: validate demand or move on. For example, you may design beautiful looking websites, but your clients want something that looks great and performs as a lead generator. For example, after looking at the broader market, we saw that a service that helps marketers scale their video content was in demand.

PR 120

PR B2B Lean Audience 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2014

1:49: Use Customer Development to Test Your Hypotheses. 4:24: No Business Plan Survives First Contact with Customers. Module 2, Getting Out of the Building: Customer Development. 0:24: What is Customer Development? 1:09: How Do You Start the Customer Development Process?

Intellectual Property 332

Intellectual Property Lean Customer Development Acquisition 332

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

Not being able to hear negative customer input is an extremely bad idea. Out of the Ashes A few of the key tenets of Customer Development , came from the ashes. era&# , but really interested in your take on these “free&# models through the prism of Customer Development. We all know how that ends up.

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

These tools—Customer Development, Agile Engineering, and Business Model design—became the lean start-up methodology , a rigorous approach to testing hypotheses and building prototypes, and, on the basis of data and evidence, adjusting or pivoting to a variant of the original hypothesis.

Incubator 419

Incubator Lean Agile Business Model 419

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2019

Lean Methodology consists of three tools designed for entrepreneurs building new ventures: The Business Model Canvas – to write down all the hypotheses about a new business; Customer Development – a process for testing those hypotheses outside the building; Agile Engineering – to rapidly build minimal viable products to test product/market fit.

Lean 334

Lean Marketing Agile Customer Development 334

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

Five Whys is designed to avoid these nebulous arguments. oh, and on the book front, you'll be able to get all of my essays so far in ebook, print-on-demand, and kindle editions - coming soon. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? They seem to be liking it. (oh,

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development? Using AdWords to assess demand for your new online. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. Getting educated about advertising, agencies, and.

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

Or more accurately, startups are a temporary organization designed to search for a scalable and repeatable business model.) There are few courses which teach aspiring entrepreneurs the skills (business models, customer and agile development, design thinking, etc.) In contrast, startups search for a business model. (Or

Wiki 318

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 318

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2010

This is just like a startup to me, complete with distribution and product development challenges, ecosystem design and many, many customers. Ive been blown away by the level of demand you all have expressed in having a forum for the whole community to come together and share what were learning.

San Francisco 122

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 122

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

As a consumer internet company with millions of customers, it may seem to have little relevancy for an enterprise software company with only a handful of potential customers, or a computer security company whose customers demand a rigorous audit before accepting a new release. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

Steve Blank

MAY 10, 2011

These diagrams are the visual representation of the how and the what a team learned in the class – how they tested their hypotheses by getting out of the building using the Customer Development process and what they learned about each part of their business model. The Lean LaunchPad was designed to fill that void.

Lean 288

Lean Business Model Agile Customer Development 288

Steve Blank

JULY 29, 2013

In web/mobile startups the canonical view is the founding team consists of a hacker, a hustler, and a designer. Filed under: Customer Development , Family/Career/Culture. Customer Development Family/Career/Culture' Founding team – complementary skills – builds the company.

Cofounder 335

Cofounder Advisory Board Customer Development Leadership 335

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 9, 2014

There is an insatiable demand for innovation and entrepreneurship. While developing the first product, Kate has had additional insights, which have stimulated new ideas for treating other diseases with a similar approach, coming full circle to imagination! Filed under: Customer Development , Teaching , Technology.

Entrepreneur 335

Entrepreneur Framework Lean Customer Development 335

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 3, 2014

— Its been three and a half years since I first designed and taught the Lean LaunchPad class and lots of water has gone under the bridge since then. Now they were figuring out how to create demand. The Customer Development process, this relentless drive to turn hypotheses into facts is what makes this learning so rapid.

Lean 280

Lean Silicon Valley Customer Development Incubator 280

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2010

Distribution, Demand Creation and Partnerships. Customer Discovery. None of the students were domain experts in their areas, and each team had to figure out how to contact potential customers and channel partners. Yet every team did figure out how to conduct extensive out of building Customer Discovery. (By

Intellectual Property 264

Intellectual Property Business Model Customer Development Distribution 264